LOVE-IN: Did pharmaceutical advances fuel the 20th century’s sexual revolution?© OSTILL/ISTOCKPHOTO.COMThe sexual revolution of the 1960s unleashed women’s sexuality and shifted their sexual behaviors away from baby-making into the realms of pleasure, love, and self-expression. So goes popular opinion, anyway. For many years, as society has looked back upon that formative decade, the prevailing assumption has been that “The Pill”—the oral hormonal combination approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for female contraception in 1960—was the spark that lit the fire.
“That’s an exaggeration,” says Linda Gordon, a historian at New York University. Elaine Tyler May, a professor of American studies and history at the University of Minnesota, concurs. Despite the widespread belief, “there’s no evidence that the birth control pill caused the sexual revolution.” The scant scientific evidence that exists regarding the sexual attitudes and behaviors of the earlier 20th century paints quite a different picture—one in which the roots of the sexual revolution reach back decades before women starting popping the pill in the 1960s.
The pharmaceutical advances of the 20th century fell into the lap of a culture primed to take advantage of them.
Gordon points out that birth control methods started growing steadily in popularity among American women in the 1910s. After ...
